1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to peripherals like printers or scanners, and more particularly, to a method and system checking a state of a peripheral.
2. Description of the Related Art
To check states of peripherals, peripheral manufacturers have to make their own input/output (I/O) modules that execute in a state-requiring/requesting device (e.g., a personal computer) and in a peripheral (e.g., a printer) controlled by or in communication with the state-requiring device. In case of operating system (OS) upgrades the manufacturers could perform input/output processing successfully by developing their own I/O modules (manufacturer-specific) to catch up with (to accommodate) each operating system version. However, this can be time consuming and increases costs.
To help this problem, three conventional methods of checking the states of peripherals without help of manufacturer-specific I/O modules have been provided. More particularly, two of the conventional methods use an I/O module in a peripheral that exchanges control information and data with an I/O module in a state-requiring device, based upon communication protocol standards, such as the IEEE 1284 bi-directional peripheral interface for personal computers standards (i.e., use a non-manufacturer specific I/O module).
To facilitate understanding of the three conventional methods, a personal computer is used as an example state-requiring device checking the states of their peripherals. According to the first conventional method, personal computers send or write particular commands to peripherals connected to them and receive or read responses from the peripherals, to acquire state information on the states of the peripherals. According to the second conventional method, personal computers periodically poll their peripherals until they receive responses from the peripherals indicating that state information has been sent. According to the third conventional method, data indicating a simple state, such as a busy state BUSY or an idle state IDLE, is added to identification information allowing personal computers to identify their peripherals and to receive the additional data added to identification information, recognizing whether their identified peripherals are in a busy state or in an idle state. Here, BUSY represents that the peripherals are performing some operations, and IDLE represents that peripherals are not performing certain operations.
However, peripheral manufacturers still cannot perform input/output interfacing operations freely or without restrictions with all types of operating system versions or various operating systems (e.g., MICROSOFT WINDOWS, MACINTOSH, etc.) through the above-described first and second conventional methods. This is because there is no universal I/O module with respect to all types of operating system versions, such as different hardware platform operating system versions or various operating systems, thereby making I/O interfacing by a peripheral with a state-requiring device that is controlled by various/different operating systems difficult. These problems can become more evident/compounded when exchanging data and/or control information according to the IEEE 1284 bi-directional peripheral interface for personal computers standards.
In addition, when the above-described first or second method is used, bi-directional communications through responses puts a big processing load on the personal computers, thus inconveniencing computer users by slowing information processing.
The third conventional method has a problem that it can only check the simple states of the peripherals and cannot check the detailed states of the peripherals.